OVERCOMING BIAS IN THE WORKPLACE

Abstract

AbstractThe authors note that despite good intensions and spending considerable amounts of money, diversity and inclusion efforts by today’s leaders often lack success. Their organization, the Center for WorkLife Law, has developed the Workplace Experiences Survey. They write that “this 10‐minute climate survey pinpoints every basic pattern of unexamined bias based on race, gender and class origin, precisely where bias is playing out (e.g., in hiring, promotions, performance evaluations, etc.), and how it is affecting outcome measures such as belonging and intent to stay.” Across sectors, “the same five patterns of bias emerge,” which in the authors’ words are: Prove‐it‐again bias, tightrope bias, Maternal wall bias, Tug of War bias, and Racial stereotypes. The Center has implemented Individual Bias Interrupters trainings. They write that “we recently delivered this training to a large company and 98% of participants said they had a better understanding of how bias affects people, 96% said they learned new strategies for interrupting bias and 89% said they were likely to use them going forward.” Regarding hiring as a starting point, there are such suggestions as, in their words: Throughout the entire hiring process, mind the metrics; Assembling a diverse candidate pool, and “eliminating bias and improving the interview process.”